In places that allow ballot initiatives you can target specific issues. That's how marijuana legalization has been happening. There are places where majority of the people support it, but they vote in politicians who don't bother to legalize it, so activists take the issue directly to the voters.

Even still, though, it's a small number of people who bother collecting the signatures and informing people about the initiative. The vast majority of people are extremely disengaged and won't bother working on changing things.